Remarks of Carlo L. Katigbak, president and CEO, at the ABS-CBN Corporation Annual Stockholders’ Meeting on May 25, 2023
Held via https://conveneagm.com/ph/abscbn_asm2023
THE PRESIDENT’S REPORT
ABS-CBN STOCKHOLDERS’ MEETING
25 May 2023
Magandang umaga po mga Kapamilya:
At one point in our history, ABS-CBN was the country’s largest broadcaster. Our collection of towers, transmitters, and frequencies allowed us to broadcast our signal to more than 90% of TV households. When our franchise was not renewed, we lost our ability to use these assets. We were effectively no longer a broadcaster.
But broadcasting never defined ABS-CBN. What we did best was to tell stories. Stories that informed and inspired. Stories that entertained and connected. Stories that galvanized people to action and stories that ignited change. The heart and soul of ABS-CBN is in storytelling.
Today, we have sharpened our focus on being unsurpassed storytellers. We know that depends on working with the country’s premiere talent in acting, writing, directing, producing, reporting, and music. We embrace the country’s best talent and are open to finding new ways of working with anyone who has a unique and meaningful story.
We have decided to shed off all assets that are not relevant to storytelling. This will allow us to raise cash to improve our production quality and quantity and to improve returns to shareholders by becoming an asset-light of content-rich company.
The old ABS-CBN used our own platforms to deliver our stories to our audiences. The new ABS-CBN is learning to partner with many different platforms to reach our previous audience and to expand to a new set of viewers. To be a Kapamilya no longer means watching Channel 2. Today, you can enjoy watching our shows or movies on several broadcasters, multiple streaming platforms, and various online sites. If we do our job right, by the end of our transformation, we hope to increase our viewership to a far larger base than what we had before. Partnerships have power; we aim to harness that in our quest to reach a larger audience.
We also harbor ambitions to reach an international audience and establish the ABS-CBN name in the global arena. Last year, in partnership with Nathan Studios, we produced a series entitled Cattleya Killer, which will premiere globally on Amazon Prime. This follows our co-production with Electric Entertainment for the series Almost Paradise, which was filmed in Cebu and aired on the WGN Network. These are small steps that are helping us learn how to write and produce for global markets. They are also medium-term investments in building new capabilities and markets for your company.
For now, we continue to improve the performance of our core business. For TV, Ang Probinsyano generated combined primetime ratings of 18% and an audience share of 38%. Our theatrical business seems to be on the road to recovery, with one of our movies, Partners in Crime, generating 177M in box office receipts last December. The movie also became the number one viewed title for Netflix Philippines in its first week of release on the platform. While another of our movies, An Inconvenient Love, ranked number 9 on Netflix globally for non-English movies.
Online, our viewership has also been improving. Last year, 137M people subscribed to our YouTube channel, while 20M people used our iwantfc service. Another 11M people visited us on our group of websites.
As we regain our stride in storytelling, we expect our business to continue to improve as well. Advertising revenues have grown side by side with ratings. In 2022, we registered a 21% improvement in ad sales to 6.4B from just 5.3B the year before. We were able to keep production costs relatively flat, with only a 3% growth from the prior year. We also generated extraordinary income of 3B from the sale of various properties, which helped offset the increase in our financing costs. As a result, our net losses declined from 5.7B in 2021 to 2.6 B last year. We are confident in the upward trend of our numbers and expect 2023 to be even better than last year. It is still an uphill climb to profitability, but the light at the end of the tunnel has become sharper and brighter.
While we are not yet where we want to be, we are certainly well on our way. For now, I would like to recognize the four groups that have made all these progress possible:
To our partners, without whom, we would not have made it this far: our partner broadcasters, our partner studios, our partner production companies, various online streamers, advertisers, and financial institutions. Thank you.
To our audiences, both here and all over the world, who have followed our stories across all the platforms. Maraming salamat.
To our people, who continue to fight for our recovery and who have gone far beyond the call of duty in their work performance.
And finally to you, our shareholders, for continuing to believe in us. Please know how grateful we are that you continue to support ABS-CBN. We reiterate our commitment to regain profitability and to emerge a better and stronger company in the near future. Likewise, even as we transition from broadcaster to storyteller, we remain faithful to our mission of being in the service of the Filipino. On behalf of the men and women of ABS-CBN, thank you, dear shareholders, for continuing to be a true Kapamilya.